I'm a libertarian lawyer and college professor. I blog on religion, history, constitutional law, government policy, philosophy, sexuality, and the American Founding. Everything is fair game though. Over the years, I've been involved in numerous group blogs that come and go. This blog archives almost everything I write.
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Friday, February 20, 2015

Aha! Harry V. Jaffa was really an esoteric East Coast Straussian

... This thinker or myth-maker (he was both) has made good on a claim he
once divulged to his boyhood friend from the Bronx, the late Francis
Canavan, S.J. Jaffa told the then already eminent theologian and Edmund
Burke-scholar in a moment of candor: “Frank, I’m inventing a myth and
I’ll make people believe it.” I learned of this story while Father
Canavan and I were attending an Edmund Burke conference about twenty
years ago. The Jesuit scholar mentioned it not to disparage Jaffa, but
to express admiration for someone who achieved what he said he would do
when they were both much younger.

The "East Coast Straussians" (Allan Bloom, Harvey Mansfield, Irving Kristol and some others) are notable for somewhat secretly (it's not much of a secret anymore) rejecting the metaphysical truths of revelation and the natural rights of the Declaration of Independence, while believing it's proper for the public to believe in the truths of both. Though, they caution on how much the natural rights doctrine of the Declaration of Independence ought be promoted. The liberalism of the late 18th Century, as it were, too easily slips into the liberalism of today. So, therefore, the Constitution should be understood as unmoored from the natural rights doctrine of the Declaration of Independence.

The West Coast Straussians (Jaffa and his followers) believe the Declaration of Independence should be connected to the Constitution and that its natural rights doctrine doesn't slip into modern liberalism.

But here's the key: The East Coast Straussians can be somewhat upfront about their conviction that the natural rights doctrine of the Declaration is a metaphysical fiction. Jaffa defended such as though it were true. Gottfried's testimony suggests he was artfully lying. That he too understood the natural rights doctrine of the Declaration as a metaphysical fiction, but thought it needed to be defended as though it were true to keep morality from falling apart.